Wray Ellis shares his love for guitars on live web TV program Virtual Honky Tonk 0

A couple of times a week, Wray Ellis chooses one of his vintage guitars, sits down in front of a microphone and holds a free-flowing jam session with hundreds of people around the world.

“I just look into the camera and go,” he says, leaning against the counter in his cottage-style kitchen while making espressos. “Sometimes it’ll be a song I don’t know very well, so it’s tricky.”

There aren’t many rock, pop or country songs from the past few decades that he doesn’t know very well.

“I only have to hear a song once, twice and it’s there,” he says. “Then it’s just a matter of getting it to my fingers.” He works hard at this; his audience includes a lot of veteran guitar players who’ll point it out if he messes up.

“You gotta be note for note,” he says.

Ellis is the host, producer, musical director, editor and star of his own twice-weekly live web TV program. Almost every Wednesday and Saturday, Ellis takes requests, offers guitar tips and shares with his viewers stories from his decades on the road as a touring bass player for some of the biggest names in Canadian music.

Virtual Honky Tonk can be watched online at www.blogtv.com/people/wrayls. There’s a countdown timer there that lets viewers know when the next live show starts (usually Wednesdays and Saturdays). Previous shows are archived at YouTube and can be found by searching for Ellis by name.

There’s a chatroom at the Blog TV site so his viewers – often hundreds at a time – can weigh in with requests. And that’s where it gets going, Ellis says with a smile.

“I’ve got terabytes of music here,” he says, playing YouTube clips of his takes on songs like Sultans of Swing (Dire Straits), Bang A Gong (T. Rex) and The Future’s So Bright (Timbuk 3). The original tracks play, too; Ellis isn’t going solo here, just playing along with existing tracks in an effort to let viewers see exactly what he’s doing with his fingers.

“Sometimes it takes me a verse to get it, but I can usually get it,” he says.

It’s his mix of instruments from the early years of rock ‘n’ roll – one of his guitars is a ‘50s Fender Stratocaster with original pickups – and modern technology that allows him to do what he does.

One of the second-floor bedrooms in his north-end home is now a music and video studio, with computers, mixers, interface units and, of course, guitars everywhere. Across the hall, the other upstairs room features more computers and a 52-inch Internet-enabled TV that allows him to stream his latest show … or watch any of the hundreds of DVDs lining the walls.

There’s also a bust of the Frankenstein monster, one of Ellis’s favourite characters; he recently hand-built and painted what he calls “the Frankencaster,” a guitar with Boris Karloff’s mug on it.

A tour of the house turns up his archives – boxes of magazines featuring articles he wrote, stacks of plaques and awards, newspaper clippings and photos, all stored away, waiting to be unpacked. After all, he just moved into this house in September. There’s also room for his workshop, where he builds, repairs and restores guitars, and spots for his six cats and one big dog, all rescue animals.

Before relocating to Peterborough and finding a new focus, Ellis wrote for magazines and worked for years in radio advertising, writing copy and jingles. He’s also taught writing and music across Ontario. But changes in that industry and a desire to get out of the GTA brought him to Peterborough, and now his focus is on his show.

“I had good memories of living here,” he says, talking about his two years at Fleming in the 1970s (audio-visual production) and his time working in the camera department at Sears.

Ellis, 54, grew up in the Haliburton Highlands and after Fleming (and several years on the road) went to Humber College for radio production and writing, where he graduated at the top of his class. But music was always there for him; from his childhood interest in Roger Miller and the Beatles, and that first acoustic guitar, to his epic 1975 journey from Haliburton to Hamilton to see Pink Floyd live and into a long career in professional music, Ellis has always had an instrument close by, a song ready.

“It’s always been important to me,” he says.

Those are the stories he tells on Virtual Honky Tonk – those and many more. Viewers may hear about the bathroom-stabbing thug in Belleville, the do-it-yourself dentist at the legendary El Morocco diner in North Bay or the time country legend Hoyt Axton told Ellis he liked his sound during a deep freeze in a parking lot in Grande Prairie, Alberta.

Ellis has a good chunk of his life story available at his website, www.davisvilleproductions.com. The bio tells a series of short, funny anecdotes about life on the Ontario road in the 1970s and 80s, with bands like Rainbow Wind and a problematic country husband-and-wife duo whose names he’s changed.

Later, Ellis signed on with Ronnie Prophet and later toured as bassist for Kalita Haverland and others. He still plays, but now, he says, it’s just for him.